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Chutzpah, thy name is Mitt

08/01/12 10:57 AMUpdated 09/06/13 07:02 AM

After reporting on President Obama’s auto-industry rescue for a few years, I thought I’d heard just about every Republican argument. Mitt Romney, however, has a new attack that I, must admit, I didn’t see coming.

In this new commercial, we’re introduced to Al Zarzour, who owned a car dealership in Lyndhurst, Ohio. When the Obama administration intervened, some dealerships were closed as part of the restructuring, and Zarzour’s was apparently one of them.

In other words, according to the attack ad, Obama rescued the American auto industry and saved millions of jobs, but some dealerships were scuttled, which means the policy was bad … or something. (That every dealership would have been closed had the president failed to act is apparently irrelevant.)

But the galling aspect of this is Romney’s unmitigated chutzpah. The Republican initially condemned Obama’s rescue policy. Then Romney changed his mind and took credit for Obama’s rescue policy. Now, the former governor is back to condemning the policy he recently tried to say was his idea all along.

Even by Romney standards, this is twisted, and more than a little ridiculous. It’s almost as if he assumes voters are such hopeless fools, Americans will believe literally anything.

Obama for America spokesperson Frank Benenati said this morning, “Let’s get this straight – the very person who argued for the US auto industry to go bankrupt, something that would have caused more than a million jobs lost and utter economic devastation in the Midwest, is now trying to attack the President on how it was handled? This ad in Ohio is a new low for the Romney campaign.”